26 Jul Uptime Robot

However it could be on a cheap, shared hosting service and you will find it going offline quite often.

There is a way to check this every minute of everyday.

Then the best part of this is; you can do this for free and with minimal work.

This service is called Uptime Robot.

Why would you need this tool?

With Uptime Robot, even when you are sleeping, eating, working or having fun your site will be checked to make sure it hasn’t crashed and is functioning correctly.

For example currently there may even be a recurring issue that happens at 3am when you’re sleeping.

So what better way to stay on top of this than to have a 24/7 monitor watch over your site, so you don’t have to worry about it.

Although it may not be useful in terms of correction the problem while you are sleeping, you will at least now have a record of it for you to look into, rather than having no idea.

You only have to set it up once and then it will do all the work of you for free, it will let you know when the site goes down and when it comes back up.

I would recommend that you keep a record of when your site goes down, if this is happening look to speak to your hosting company and see what they can do about it.

Another great feature of it is that it can monitor up to 50 domain names, so it is worthwhile for a web design company to have to monitor for all their clients.

What they do:

What they do is; request your website’s headers every five minutes.

If they receive a ‘200-ok‘ message, then this means your site is running fine so they don’t inform you of any changes.

However if it instead is presented with a ‘404-page not found‘ or any similar message, then it will send more requests every 30 seconds to establish the seriousness of the issue. If the same response codes come back from your site then Uptime Robot will send you an alert via email, SMS, Twitter etc.

You will then receive another message to let you know your when it has changed and your website is working again.

Thats why it is such as useful tool for keeping an eye on your blog’s uptime.

This tool can also be a life-saver for another reason, one which is an even bigger problem. If you miss your renewal date for your domain name.

If you miss it and your site goes down as a result of the domain expiring, you will receive an alert within a just a few minutes. If this happens be sure to go online and renew it as soon as possible to ensure you don’t lose any business.

Conclusion:

Uptime Robot is a simple, yet brilliant little tool, providing plenty of value which makes it a shock nowadays that it is free. It has the potential to save you if you make a mistake with your renewal or keep you informed with issues on your site.